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pointerpointer.com's use of voronoi, canvas, and javascript

Paul Irish1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2012–2025
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explainer · intermediate · evergreen · 2012–2025 on HN

Paul Irish explains how pointerpointer.com works. It uses a hidden canvas of colored Voronoi regions to look up which photo matches the cursor position.

HN links it as the author's own breakdown of Pointer Pointer's inner workings.

3 comments from Hacker News

@Conlectus2020-12 · in “Pointer Pointer (2012)”

Here's a picture of all the different regions: link For those curious if how it works, Paul Irish did a breakdown of it quite a while ago: ▶ this video TL:DW - Vornoi Diagrams[1] and manual tagging, no machine learning needed. [1] link

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@petercooper2025-10 · in “Pointer Pointer (2012)”

Paul Irish explained the basics of how it works here: ▶ this video I wonder if you could create something similar nowadays using generative AI but with the finger in a very specific location without pregenerating thousands of images.

@paulirish2012-06 · in “PointerPointer: points to your cursor”

I made a quick video explaining how the webapp works: ▶ this video Essentially, using the gridPositions.json to populate a Voronoi Grid (toggle display of the <canvas> in your browser). Then your cursor position is used against the grid to find which shape encloses it which maps back to the source JPEG which is then displayed.